The VA lobotomized thousands of returning WWII vets

Editor's note: The Wall Street Journal has just published a multimedia report on the lobotomization of returning veterans after World War II, in the style of the New York Times' landmark "Snowfall." Presented here is an excerpt from the text report, entitled "Forgotten Soldiers." The rest of the report can be accessed through the table of links at the bottom of this page.

Roman
Tritz’s memories of the past six decades are blurred by age and
delusion. But one thing he remembers clearly is the fight he put up the
day the orderlies came for him.

“They got the notion they were
going to come to give me a lobotomy,” says Mr. Tritz, a World War II
bomber pilot. “To hell with them.”

The orderlies at the veterans
hospital pinned Mr. Tritz to the floor, he recalls. He fought so hard
that eventually they gave up. But the orderlies came for him again on
Wednesday, July 1, 1953, a few weeks before his 30th birthday.

This time, the doctors got their way.

The
U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans—and
likely hundreds more—during and after World War II, according to a cache
of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The
Wall Street Journal. Besieged by psychologically damaged troops
returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific,
the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on
former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and
schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals....